Recently, I decided to cut the amounts of sweet food-items that I eat every day. And, as it turns out, that turns out to be an interesting challenge when you’re looking for something to snack. Because most snacks seem to be made of mostly sugar with some other flavors.

But first of all: why? Well, I have a weight problem and I am a diabetic. Those two things are related to one another so I just have to bring down my glucose level to average levels. And well, pills will do this for me, but I hate to take those pills every day. So I need to adjust my food pattern to take less things that contain (lots of) sugar.

Of course, there are snacks that are sweetened with artificial sugars, that won’t increase my glucose levels but they don’t take away the craving for sweet food. It fools my body with fake sugars and my brain continues to think I’m just eating sugars, but it also maintains my addiction to sweet food. And it’s amazing when you realize that people can get addicted to the tastes of sweet foods, especially snacks.

My daily meals are already avoiding most of the sweet food items. Bread, for example, is slightly sweet but add peanut butter or cheese to it and you barely taste it. Dinner is often a piece of meat with additional veggies and/or potatoes and those don’t really taste sweet either. No sweet-tasting desserts and well, I admit… I like to start the day with a bisquit and raspberry jam, or marmalade. Then again, I also start every day with a cup of coffee, black with one sugar. But I consider this okay since people need sugar, especially when you’re starting the day. But basically, after breakfast I will try to stay sweet-free.

But the real problem is when you feel hungry in-between breakfast and lunch, or in-between lunch and dinner. Or worse, after dinner when you’re looking at a good movie. Popcorn can be an option if it’s the non-sugared version but that’s a salty version. Too much salt isn’t good either, which is why potato chips aren’t that good either. So, peanuts and other nuts make okay snacks. I could consider all kinds of fruits but fruits tend to taste sweet, and it’s the sweet taste I’m trying to avoid, not the sugar.

So, what other kinds of snacks are there? I could eat a piece of cheese, some sausages, nuts, carrots, chips or just turn on the fryer and bake something we Dutch people call “bitterballen“. Fatty, but not sweet. But after these, I tend to run out of options and besides, none of these seem to be available in local shops in small half-pound bags for a nice-sized snack. If you want snacks that are packed in small portions, you tend to end up with a lot of sweet stuff, including cookies, lots of candy an even certain kinds of sweetened chips. And although they do sell sugar-free products, most of those are still sweet.

And as I said, I don’t want sweet snacks.

So, here’s my dilemma… I want non-sweet snacks, not sugar-free snacks. And those are hard to get. Supermarkets are basically selling just sweet snacks. Such a shame…